Co-Mentoring Project with Bennett College for Women

Further validating its successes, in the fall of 2006 Women’s Studies was awarded a grant from the Mellon foundation in order to continue a faculty co-mentoring project with the Africana Women’s Studies program at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, a historically black college. Faculty from UMass and Bennett met at a mini-conference in Washington, D.C. in September to discuss potential collaborative teaching, faculty development, and student support projects. They called this endeavor “Voices of Resistance Learning Communities.” This partnership eventually blossomed into a multi-year project out of which lasting relationships were formed. In 2009, faculty and staff from UMass and Bennett gave a presentation on their collaboration at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in Atlanta. Also in 2006, the Center for Teaching funded a Teaching and Learning Development seminar so Women’s Studies faculty could improve the teaching of the program’s core course, Women’s Studies 187. Most importantly, participants in this seminar were focused on developing pedagogical methods for teaching the intersectional approach to teaching women's studies. ⁵⁴

⁵⁴ WOST Newsletter Spring 2007, p. 1; Fall 2007, p. 1-2; Fall 2009, p. 2.